AltME groups: search

Yes to the first question and http://www.dobeash.com/RebGUI/edit.html#section-3
to the second ;)

Wiki WidgetList updated and completed (finally): http://trac.geekisp.com/rebgui/wiki/WidgetList

Anton - as for the get-rebgui, if you are the author, you could check 
following - Bobik's situation was, that he used latest View, the 
script showed following:

connecting to: www.dobeash.com
Script: "RebGUI update system" (21-Feb-2006)
Local RebGUI version ==> none
Remote directory ======> http://www.dobeash.com/RebGUI/

Local directory =======> c:\documents and settings\user-name-here\data 
aplikací\rebol\public\www.dobeash.com\RebGUI
Downloading manifest ==> OK


the thing is - above directory does not exist, nor was it created 
by the get-rebgui script .... so the thing is, what happened then. 
It did not start downloading particular widgets though ...

It's in the registry, and expressed as an environment variable APPDATA 
as well.

the problems were described ... in general we should be able to have 
choice to install for a) all users b) one particular user .... and 
with uninstall to a) keep private data b) remove data .... uninstall 
is flawed though, as when you uninstall, the icon is removed from 
control panel and other user has no option to uninstall ... or you 
remove the rebol even when other user did not agree to :-)

The main problem is where in the registry REBOL stores its settings. 
There are per-user settings and per-machine settings, and REBOL stores 
many of both in the wrong places in the registry. The details of 
this are once again off topic, though.

How about creating an examples directory, and link to that for each 
widget?  This would remove any confusion that others may also have.

Latest SVN change (Rev#16) now uses reduce/only to evaluate words 
/ paths without the need for compose. This allows code like:

display "" [
	image i
	bar my-width
	field my-data/field1
	...
]

to be written. It still does not allow inline expressions like:

display "" [
	text my-width - 3 form now/date
	text (my-width - 3) (form now/date)
]


although I'm working on adding support for the later(parenthesized) 
form. As a side note, this is a bit of a shift in my position. I 
used to be of the opinion that explicit declaration via compose was 
more efficient than implicit declaration; but it turns out to be 
less efficient in a number of ways:

	Coding: requires extensive use of compose/deep and parenthesis

 Obviousness: it's not obvious why code like "image my-image" doesn't 
 work

 Complexity: forcing use of compose/deep makes it harder to write 
 action blocks inline [that need themselves to use compose]
	Familiarity: It's not the way VID or other dialects work

 Speed: compose/deep is actually slower than reduce/only and a few 
 subsequent parenthesis reductions


You can thank Graham's comments above as the catalyst to change. 
;)

Change has no effect on current display code and does not impact 
the use of compose/deep. It merely *allows* you to write:

	display "" compose/deep [date: field (date-width) ]

as:

	display "" [date: field date-width]

Ashley, I think it is a bad idea to use reduce/only in this context. 
It was basically designed for the draw dialect, so it disallows function 
and expression evaluations. I would recommend just processing the 
layout dialect similar to the way VID layout does it.

Why? The main dialect parser of RebGUI can now be expressed in one 
simple parse construct:

parse reduce/only spec words [
	any [
		opt [... evaluate () to return a REBOL value...]
		[
			parse rules to handle REBOL values
			...
		]
	]
]


compared to the relatively complex parsing logic in VID (which, to 
be fair, has to handle styles amongst other things).


The main functional difference between what this allows in VID and 
RebGUI is that you don't need to parenthesize your expressions in 
VID (and I kind of like the idea of having to parenthesize them anyway, 
it makes expressions stand out just like they do in compose).


Having said that, if someone can show me a RebGUI parser built along 
the lines of VID that is clean and lean I'll willing to be convinced 
otherwise. ;)

Latest SVN change (Rev#17) now evaluates parenthesis without the 
need for compose. This allows code like:

display "" [
	text (my-width + 50) (form now/date)
]


and the following widgets now reduce their data block: anim, check-group, 
led-group, radio-group ... which allows:

display "" [
	anim data [image-1 image-2]
	radio-group data [idx "One" "Two"]
]


These changes shouldn't impact existing RebGUI apps (i.e. they are 
backwardly compatible).

Couple of minor administrative fixes:


 - Examples added for every widget in http://trac.geekisp.com/rebgui/wiki/WidgetList
  

 - http://www.dobeash.com/RebGUI/display.htmlupdated to reflect latest 
 changes (and have information duplicated in WidgetList removed)

 - Updated site with latest build and corrected path to: "do http://www.dobeash.com/RebGUI/get-rebgui.r"

As we have made several, IMO useful changes to RebGUI, now to submit 
them? Is there something like a development branch in SVN? Or should 
I diff the changes and post here or mail Ashley?

I think just commit the changes, and we'll examine the differences.

The project isn't big enough to justify multiple source trees at 
present, so as long as what gets committed works and is functionally 
complete we should be fine (and get-rebgui.r is based on stable snapshots 
so we can handle temporary breakages). Just make sure the committed 
changes include those made in rev#16 and rev#17, and a point form 
summary of changes posted here. Thanks.

How about adding a refinement to the display function that does something 
similar to the load-form-data function we discussed a while back. 
We could then populate forms at creation with:

	display/load-data "" [..] block-of-values

and reset them with:

	load-form-data my-form block-of-values


I think it's a lot cleaner to do this on a form basis than trying 
to do it at the widget level.

It must be dynamic, so not only at creation time. And, I only store 
values wehre the user did enter something. Hence it's necessary to 
iterate over every form element and either set a value if available 
or reset to a default value.

Why does this function doesn't have a /no-show refinement?
 same could be said for show-color and show-text.

How about a clear-data function?
 Could be useful.


I'm thinking one function could handle all these permutations: a 
set-attribute function like:

	set-attribute: make function! [
		face [object!]
		attribute [word!]
		value [any-type!]
		/no-show
		/focus
	] [
		...
	]


where a value of none! meant clear (which is the case anyway for 
widgets where none! is a legal value).

Just to inform you, we are going to publish all our RebGUI changes 
today. Those will fixe and enhance quite a lot of things. Further 
a new widget "drop-tree" will be published as well.

nice and cool. So the table widget is the last stopper ....

And the WidgetList Wiki too please. ;)

How to edit Wiki pages?

 If you have source access you automatically have Wiki edit access. 
 Follow these steps:

	1) http://trac.geekisp.com/rebgui
	2) login
	3) Click WidgetList
	4) Scroll to end of page and click "Edit this page"
	5) Make changes then click "Submit changes"

Hmm, I just logged on as "robert" and I see four buttons above that 
link titled:

	Edit this page
	Attach file
	Delete this version
	Delete page

What OS / Browser are you using?

it helps with merging. if i change something in rebgui and somebody 
else to, we want to merge that, not throwing somebodies work away. 
svn helps there.

I just tried logging in as robert from XP using FF, works without 
a problem (Opera didn't seem to work correctly). Make sure that after 
clicking the "Login" link and entering your username and password 
that the red "Login" link changes to black text reading "logged in 
as robert". All Wiki pages are then editable.

how long do you think it will last till some testing stuff is being 
made an official version?

 Once SVN changes are in and working I let it sit for a week or two 
 before taking another snapshot for get-rebgui.r.

Identified and fixed first problem (CR deleted in OVR mode) ... see 
SVN rev#19. Couldn't reproduce second problem, does it occur under 
%tour.r?

try this though.  Put the caret at the beginning of the text in the 
area field.  change to overwrite mode, and hold down the return key.

That's a weird one (and it's not specific to OVR mode). I'll see 
if I can work out what's causing it. Odd that no-one else caught 
that yet! ;)

The bug must be in area.r in the slider-action. weird stuff. the 
area-slider is before the area, so the slider is shown when the area 
is shown. and in case of this last return its action is called. and 
there the caret is changed. Maybe all this resize-automatics in 'redraw 
is a bit to magic? Should that bemoved into  explicit calls?

somehow the keep-caret-in-visible-area magic is broken. take tour, 
enter a lot of lines with content. more then fit in window. scroll 
down, set caret and scroll up. when the caret scrolls out of range, 
it moves automatically up. keeps also position in line. but not if 
char is at start of line, then it jumps to second char.

Gosh, I remember checking font-height and realising it was integer. 
How did I let that go ?

Is any work being done to allow VID and Rebgui windows to share the 
same parentage or whatever so that they appear over each other

Might not be a RebGUI related problem, but let's start here: I have 
the following problem from time to time on my system and always on 
the system of one of my testers.


On my system: I start my app, the gui comes up and I click the first 
widget and the app falls back to the console. Without an error. This 
happens as do-events returns.


The same problem is on the other system, but here I only can do one 
click on a widget.

Does anybody know this kind of problem and what cause it could have?

No.


That's a pretty broad problem statement Robert, sort of like "I click 
on something and something fails". ;)

Grahma, yes it's possible. My TABLE enhancement allows this. I hope 
to be able to publish all changes today. The main problem is, that 
it takes some time to write the docs for all changes. But maybe I 
just publish the code and than you can look at it.

Ashley, I know... I really couldn't specify it more narrow. I have 
the same effect on my system, when my app exited with an error. I 
hack in UNVIEW and than restart it, I alway return to the console 
immediatly. Doing it once again, UNVIEW and restart, than it works.

If I use UNVIEW two times, it works immediatly.

ATTENTION: rebgui-edit.r was not yet merged. Latest revision doesn't 
include older changes. We will do this ASAP. But rebgui-edit.r is 
required in this version otherwise all other changes done by us might 
not work.



FIXED *rebgui/pad: Now only works for horizontal padding. Padding 
should happen depending on the layout direction left-to-right or 
top-to-down.
	Cyphre: now PAD works according to the AFTER settigns. Example:
	display "Test" [
		after 3
	    field
		pad 5
	    field
	    pad 5
	    field
	    pad 5
	    field
	    pad 5
	    field
	    pad 5
	    field
	]
	Robert,let me know if it works like you wanted.

FIXED *group-box: When setting a new title group-box/text: "new-title" 
the surounding frame needs to be adjusted to the new text-width.

FIXED *drop-tree: When selecting different quick-access buttons directly 
one after the other, the drop-tree shouldn't close

FIXED *drop-tree: Highlighting the pressed quick-access button with 
green, the hovered one as is in orange. To give user visial feedback.

FIXED *general: a way to sepcify "align ['left]" for all further 
widgets to avoide repeation. Idea: Add disaply keywords: left, right, 
center
	Cyphre: added keyword TEXT-ALIGN left/right/center. Example:
	display "Test" [
		text-align right
		after 3
	    t: text 20 "test 1"
	    field "test 2"
	    field "test 3"
	    text-align left
	    field "test 4"
	    field "test 5"
	    field "test 6"
	]

FIXED *drop-list: an option that will show the list layered above 
everything (like the tree list of drop-tree).
	Cyphre: added drop-list/popup-mode: 'inside(default) or 'outside
	note: the same works for drop-tree

FIXED *drop-tree: changing state of the drop-tree (a new entry was 
selected) should only be done if the ACTION code returns TRUE. Otherwise 
the old state is kept, the drop-tree is closed and nothing happens. 
This allows the code to check for some pre-conditions before changing 
the state, and give some feedback to the user. Much like the on-unfocus 
functionality of RebGUI.

FIXED *drop-tree: pressing the quick-access numbers doesn't work 
any more as the drop-tree closes now if the mouse is clicked outside 
the drop-tree

FIXED *table: table/selected returns NONE if the table is empty and 
no record is selected. If there was one recrod selected at any time, 
than table/selected returns [none none <repeated for number of columns>]. 
If not row is selected at any time, table/selected should just return 
NONE.

FIXED *table: If a table is re-used in that the table is reused with 
code like:
	insert clear table/data [...]
	people/redraw

and there was a row selected before, than the internal state is still 
in "row selected" but the new row isn't highlighted. Here internal 
state and GUI don't match.

FIXED *drop-tree: clicking a "+/-" in the tree only open/closes the 
tree without calling the action for the node

FIXED *drop-tree: Re-add whole line selection and hovering functionality 
(so that mouse does not have to be over text)

FIXED *drop-tree: Add an option to get big fast-selction keys aligned 
left-to-right
	Cyphre: added drop-tree/expander-mode: 'big(default) or 'small

FIXED *button: Add an option to disable a button my-button/active: 
true/false, if disabled the button is drawn greyed-out
	Cyphre: usage is my-button/active: true/false show my-button

FIXED *field: Support number datatypes for TEXT so that things like 
field-a/text + field-b/text can be used

 Cyphre: you need to set field/edit-mode: 'numbers to activate this 
 behaviour for field(othervise it works like a normal field)
	2nd implementation uses own styel: number-field

FIXED *radio-group: Add an API that allows to provide a new DATA 
specification block at runtime or a way to alter the text of the 
radio fields at runtime.

 Cyphre: now you can just change the data content and do show on the 
 radio-group like:
		my-radio-group/data: ["item1" "item2" "item3" "item4"]
		show my-radio-group

 Note that it won't react on change of number of items. Just change 
 of texts.

FIXED *radio-group: Add a way to select one radio field at run-time
	added accesor select-item item [integer!] usage:
		my-radio-group/select-item 2
		show my-radio-group

 note: you can get the selected item using my-radio-group/picked, 
 you can get the text of selected item using my-radio-group/selected

FIXED *drop-tree/grey-out: Can it be done in that we only show the 
text in a light grey instead of black? Like Windows does it.
	Cyphre: now the masked text is light grey

FIXED *on-focus / on-unfocus: If FALSE is return from the ACTION 
and the user clicked somewhere on the screen, the focus is still 
in the "field" but no cursor bar is visible

FIXED *drop-list: IIRC in your widgets it was possible to start typing 
and the selection list was filtered. A mandatory feature for the 
drop-list :-))

 Cyphre: added drop-list/editable? flag to enable/disable editing 
 of the drop-list field

 also added drop-list/auto-fill? flag which enables automatic text 
 filterin from the selection list

FIXED *general: add hover tooltip help option to every widget (global 
patch)

 Cyphre: added TOOL-TIP facet to rebface object. If TOOL-TIP is set 
 to string! value a tooltip is shown when mouseover such widget.
	example:
		display "test" [
			button "press me" tool-tip "press this button to continue"
		]

FIXED*drop-list: proivde a much better selection-list opening algorithm 
especially for long lists. Open upward, downward, middle like so 
that as much entries are shown for the given screen space. And an 
option that will show the list layered above everything (like the 
tree list of drop-tree).
	Cyphre:

 -added droplist/lines - can be 'auto (default) or integer! to force 
 number of shown lines in droplist

 -added droplist/droplist-mode - can be 'auto (default) 'upward, 'downward 
 or 'middle to force way how the list is popped up
	you can use various combination of those settings.
FIXED*table: Add an API that allows to select a row at run-time.
	Cyphre: Usage is for example:
		my-table/select-row 5
		show my-table

FIXED*table: Add an API to table that allows to change the columns 
layout at runtime: my-table/reset ["Column 1" left 0.25 "Column2" 
center 0.75]

 Cyphre: I added the functionality byt the API call is my-table/set-columns 
 ["Column 1" left 0.25 "Column2" center 0.75]

FIXED*drop-list: fire action only if selection was made/changed, 
at the moment action fires if clicked on field too

FIXED*general: on-un/focus should be fired if user clicks an other 
widget, not only if carets leaves the widget when TAB is pressed

FIXED*table: moving bar up/down with keyboard should fire click-action, 
alternativ: pressing RETURN can fire click action

FIXED*table: align header text like data (left, center, right) at 
the moment always left
FIXED*table: TRAC #21

FiXED*TRAC #5 Cyphre: should be fixed but please test it and let 
me know.
FIXED*TRAC #6

Please give all changes a try, and help to enhance RebGUI even more.

Docs not updated yet, feel free to pick up this task :-) and I didn't 
checked against the TRAC database.

performance. Once you are used to it, you optimize everything.. a 
single file for installation is good, and while we areat it, why 
not kill all this whitespaces? source is available anyway. (thinking 
loudwith Ashleys voice ;)

as for get-rebgui - problem is with path ... could it be extended 
so that it would save get-rebgui itself into HOME directory, so that 
next-time I simply get-rebgui, instead of going to Dobeash.com and 
looking-up for url?

get-rebgui.r and create-distribution.r are two different things. 
The later creates the rebgui.r file. And yes, whitespaces can be 
stripped and even the whole thing than be compressed.

Petr, go for it and change it.

And show up a requester to let the user choose.

I can, and probably will do so tomorrow, just got back from 3 days 
trip, tired, so just relaxing today ... just dunno if other would 
not object. As for me, I can miss the requester ...

Than add the feature, with command line options or something like 
this. Just provide both ways and let the user choose. There is no 
wrong/right here.

maybe I will even download it as-is now, and change also target location 
.... using cache directory does not work for me, I organise "library 
packages" a bit different way ...

Cyphre: now you can just change the data content and do show on the 
radio-group like:
my-radio-group/data: ["item1" "item2" "item3" "item4"]
show my-radio-group

Note that it won't react on change of number of items. Just change 
of texts.

FIXED *radio-group: Add a way to select one radio field at run-time
added accesor select-item item [integer!] usage:
my-radio-group/select-item 2
show my-radio-group

note: you can get the selected item using my-radio-group/picked, 
you can get the text of selected item using my-radio-group/selected

I guess that's why we should have accessors and standard ways of 
accessing data so nothing breaks.

VID accessors is good methog, it just stopped half-way, which is 
a pity ... should work in set-face 'attribute 'value mode, and not 
only in set-face 'value one....

... if that is the thing you are talking about in regards to oop 
and overriding methods :-)

The problem is RebGUI was initially designed as simple and resources 
efficient system. Now RebGUI users want more and more :-) So exteding 
the system based on the initial idea is not so easy ;)

I just tried rebgui, and I have a few questions ...

is there a reason, that display opens the windows, but does not start 
do-events? This seems a bit strange to me. When testing layouts in 
the console, I mostly end up with inactive windows.

I have tried to create something like a calendar layout:

two TEXTs, and a TEXT-LIST below them, and then 2 rows and 2 columns 
of this. 

The internal resizer was not able to cope with this, either the left 
widgets, or the right widgets were resized. Is it just me, or is 
the resizer not able to cope with this?

I've been looking at how to save a form contents and reload the same 
values when opening the form.

when I save the form contents, I just go through the pane and grab 
all the values for the widgets I have viz: radio-groups, and edit-lists.

And to restore the form contents, in the do block of the layout, 
I go thru the layout and restore the values.

Graham, good tip: Don't save/restore anonymous widgets. If (whyever) 
the order of faces change you are lost. I always use named widgets, 
even it's more to code. But I can move the stuff around without any 
problems. And my widgets have the same name as the database-columns.

i would take roberts suggestion but use my own naming. eg have a 
/my-name in your fields and compare with that.

Graham, simple fix: Just prefix each field name internally with graham_<field-name-by-user> 
and you are save.

I guess I would use named fields though if I had to save and restore 
to database fields

So its stored only short-term and long-term-compatibility is no issue?

and I don't want to save the form definition with the data

and then I need to preserve the names of the fields with the data

There might be some quirks here and there but it's nothing critical.

and in the trac

perhaps better to create an object and save it like that.

Hi Graham, in my example-2 the the right-most text-lists keep their 
widths, and the lower text-lists keep their height, and the upper 
left text-list is maximized to fill the size of the window.
I would like to have equal sizes for all text-lists.

I am creating templates which I load up and display.  These templates 
contain some variables for label widths etc.  I have to bind the 
template to the variables, but then if I do that, operators such 
as '- have no context.  do I have to redefine '- and '+ etc?

Ingo:


is there a reason, that display opens the windows, but does not start 
do-events?

 ... we can't assume the "first" window automatically needs to start 
 the event loop. Perhaps the display is being assigned to a word and 
 cached for later use? Or the display is done early in the script 
 for lots of subsequent initialization and *then* needs to fire up 
 the event loop. I personally like having to code it explicitly as 
 it then stands out - "We are starting the event loop HERE".

Is it possible to get the window size?
 ... display [button do [ws: face/size]]

Is it possible to set an own resizer function?

 ... No, you'd have to change a lot of code to implement your own.

I would like to have equal sizes for all text-lists.

 The RebGUI resizing model is pretty basic, it supports one resizeable 
 widget in each axis (horizonal and vertical) with any number of offset 
 adjustments (the #XY directives). More advanced schemes (such as 
 proportional or percentage based) are possible, but significantly 
 harder to implement (and require size/state information to be retained).

Robert: Your rev#21 changes to rebgui-edit.r nuked my rev#19 and 
rev#20 changes ... but the good news is that they collectively constituted 
the following line in the insert-char function:


 unless any [insert? tail? view*/caret newline = first view*/caret] 
 [remove view*/caret]


Should I put that line back in a new rev or do you want to bundle 
that in with any additional changes you are working on?

Always a problem when working with string representations of a dialect. 
Try:

go: func [ template [string!]][
	width: 30
	display "testing ..." load template
]


Although this depends on width being global. But since you're working 
with strings anyway, why not forget binding and go with simple variable 
substitution as in:

	...
	replace/all template "%width%" 30
	...


with appropriate markers to prevent accidental partial replacements.

what's the safest way to allow users to create templates in rebgui 
and not allow them to put executeable code in it?

rebgui-edit.r: We have merged it and IIRC Cyphre wanted to sync it. 
But I check the repository.

what's the safest way to allow users to create templates in rebgui 
and not allow them to put executeable code in it?
 http://polly.rebol.it/test/test/game/use/game/unbind.r

makes an empty context for all known words and binds the loaded block 
to it. including words inside objects and functions.

and could be extended to keep some words bound.

Take a look at the source. I think it's a flag and if you than do 
a /redraw it should be sorted.

Ashley ...

[me] "is there a reason, that display opens the windows, but does 
not start do-events?" [ashley] ... we can't assume the "first" window 
automatically needs to start the event loop. Perhaps the display 
is being assigned to a word and cached for later use? Or the display 
is done early in the script for lots of subsequent initialization 
and *then* needs to fire up the event loop.

Right, that's it! 


As I see it, there are 3 distinct actions: layout, display, handle 
the events.


With view I can do the layout independently from display and event-handling. 
With rebgui I can't, because display does the layout _and_ display, 
and then I'm stuck with a dysfunctional window. So I can't do a layout 
to assign it to a subpane somewhere, it's instantly displayed as 
it's own window.

display was supposed to return a layout and not display as an refinement. 
 It does not.  But it can be changed to do this.

will look in tour.r .... but normally, when I use rebol and encap 
something, if you have "do %rebgui.r", then that file is not being 
encapped, the app expects it it on your hd ...

pekr, I built my own "compiler" for such things and use make files 
to build projects like this. I'd imagine that would be simple to 
do?

I'm having trouble running the list-view.r demo.  The error message 
that comes up is:
list-view has no value
  where: layout  Near: list-view 100x80 data [[...

I've checked and found the list-view widget in rebgui-widgets.r so 
I added that to my test program as follows:

do %../rebgui-widgets.r

and I get the following error message:

Error: colors has no value  near: color: colors/edge


this latest error is happening during the execution of the "do rebgui-widgets.r" 
as the statement following this  is not being reached.

All other demos seem to work okay.

Gordon, the demo directory and scripts (bubble-menu, list-view & 
triggers) were part of earlier releases. The directory was removed 
when the source was migrated to SVN, and all non-stable widgets (including 
list-view, bubble-menu and a few others) were removed. There is no 
need to "do %rebgui-widgets.r" as this is included directly in the 
new merged %rebgui.r script (and invoked from %rebgui-ctx.r if you 
run from the SVN source direct). LIST-VIEW is an important widget 
which we are hoping Henrik will be able to port to RebGUI from the 
excellent work he has done on this already.

I'm trying my way of creating templates, but have come across a problem 
with the check-group.  This takes, none, true and false as values, 
these are in the global context.  If I define more local words with 
the same names as these, how I can set them to the values in the 
global context?

odd .. it displays this large template, and then crashes the second 
time round

maybe it tries to scale it down? calculates ones and does an auto-resize? 
and something gets to small?

I might be doing something bad when i try and restore values ....

visible and total are variable names I tend to use. It might be some 
of my recent code...

Go to your SVN directory, right-click and select SVN Update

what would be good is a way to easily save and restore the state 
of all supported widgets

and "version control" sounds so complicated guru-style. its just 
fear, at least for simple downloads. ;)

Ok, so to save them and restore them later to the same display ?

including check-groups and radio-groups

I save the data to a block and then restore the state

please post privately to me the most critical issues, you would eventually 
see fixed for RebGUI. I will look if there are any money left and 
eventually order Cyphre to do some work in that regars ...

I want rebgui and vid window compatibility